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Friday, June 2, 2017

More Reflections: Student Input for Reading

The last survey which Bob Patrick and I gave our Latin 1 students at the end of the semester surrounded their input into what kinds of readings which they would like to have for Latin 2. As our Latin department has "untextbooked" and because we want students to have some say in their curriculum, the survey results give us an idea of what topics students find compelling. Below is the survey (using Google Forms):

The top five responses were (in order):

Mythology - heroes

Mythology - gods and goddesses

Mythological monsters and fantastical beasts

Mystery stories

Adapted readings from Harry Potter

This shows me that students want readings about mythology and that they want a variety of readings related to the topic. I was actually surprised that students picked mystery stories, but then again, mysteries do make for compelling readings (gosh, are there any mystery novellas out there?). I thought that students would want to read adapted readings from the Hobbit (because that interests me), but apparently, students do not find that compelling. This results from this survey definitely lend themselves to my planning for next year. For example, since students want readings related to fantastical beasts and adapted readings from Harry Potter, I can create a unit on the basilisk, as this beast appears in many different Latin stories throughout the ages and then give students an adapted reading of the basilisk chapter from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I am tempted to read JK Rowling's book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them purely to see what mythological beasts and animals are in it.

2 comments:

Salve! First may I say how much you have influenced my pedagogy in the last couple of years. While I have been writing stories in Latin for a while, I hadn't given much thought to limiting the vocabulary until recently and now of course, I'm kind of obsessed with it. I hope this isn't too forward but my students also love mysteries, spooky stories. And so - I wrote one - a graphic novella with limited vocabulary that has three spooky stories. It's recently published on Amazon. Any thoughts or feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated. There's also some info on my own blog at www.latinahilara.com. Gratias, magister - I hope at some point to meet you in person.

Thanks for your very nice comments - I am glad to hear that you have found my blog to be helpful. I was not aware of your graphic novella, but I am very interested in checking it out. I appreciate you letting me know about it!